This invention relates to fantasy sports systems and methods and, more particularly, this invention relates to ways in which graphic animation technologies may be integrated with fantasy sports contest applications.
Athletic endeavors have long supported a broad range of secondary competitions, which include wagering on the outcome of particular games and wagering on the performance of a particular player.
In known fantasy sports contests, a user selects a roster, a team, a particular individual, or a group of individuals in an athletic contest. The user is given the ability to take on the role of a fictional general manager with powers which may include the ability to draft, trade, dismiss and otherwise manage the player or players on the user's fantasy sports team.
Conventionally, either a fantasy sports contest provider or a league commissioner sets the rules under which a group of fantasy sports users compete against each other in a fantasy sports contest. For example, for every goal scored in real-life by a member of the user's fantasy soccer team, five points may be awarded to the user in the fantasy sports contest.
The real-life athletic events upon which a fantasy sports contest may be based are varied, and typically involve selecting players from real-life team sports (e.g., football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer or rugby), selecting players from real-life individual sports (e.g., golf, tennis or automotive racing), or selecting participants from competitions involving animals (e.g., horse and dog racing). The user's selections are typically stored in the user's fantasy sports contest roster. The performance of these selections in real-life competitions collectively determine the user's performance in the fantasy sports contest.
Current fantasy sports contests application typically focus on providing users with non-graphical information (e.g., descriptions, statistics, etc.) about sporting events that may be useful or interesting to the user in fantasy sports contests. While such non-graphical information may communicate important information associated with these sporting events to the user, such information does not communicate any exciting visual plays in these events that are also very important to the user.
Accordingly, it is desirable to present improved ways for providing animated videos for depicting plays in various sporting events to the user.